RIM's Blackberry knocked offline
Ongoing problem halts Western hemisphere traffic, company seeks to restart system, according to a TV report.
April 18 2007: 7:19 AM EDT
NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) -- A massive system wide failure of the BlackBerry network has brought emails to a halt for user's of the handheld communication devices Wednesday morning, according to a report from a New York TV news channel.
The problem, which started at 8 p.m. ET Tuesday, affected Blackberries throughout the Western hemisphere by preventing emails from being pushed to the handheld devices, according to WNBC.
Research in Motion (Charts), which makes Blackberry device and runs the system, was not immediately available to comment on the outage.
Research in Motion is trying to reset the system but expects the problem to last into the morning, the report said.
Even when the system is reset, users will experience delays as the company processes through the backlog of email messages, WNBC reported.
As of Wednesday morning the Blackberry Customer Support Center has a recorded message that says the following: "Please be advised that we are currently experiencing service interruptions that are causing delays in sending and receiving messages."
"We apologize for the inconvenience and will provide updates as soon as they become available," the message said.